CNU Summit to Focus on Reforming Transportation, Planning Principles

The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define emerging policies that embrace entire urban transportation networks, rather than disjointed transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).

Summit attendees and partners, including Streetsblog, will participate in discussions on emerging network planning and develop a strategy for informing the national transportation infrastructure debate, of particular significance as climate and transportation bills move forward. As the draft CNU Statement of Principles on Transportation Networks [PDF] notes, climate change and infrastructure problems in the U.S. continue to intensify:

The US now has the world’s highest level of VMT per capita, while simultaneously experiencing the highest traffic fatality rates of any developed nation. Per capita traffic delay has more than doubled in the United States since 1982. This deterioration in transportation system performance has occurred in spite of an ongoing public investment of more that $200 billion per year in transportation infrastructure."

CNU President John Norquist said the current focus by transportation professionals on road capacity gives us cities like Detroit, where consistent spending to widen roads has destroyed communities.

"Federal and state DOTs don’t understand how cities work. They still want to take rural forms and jam big roads into cities." he said. "Rather than measuring projected traffic flow, they should be measuring how much value it adds to a neighborhood. The U.S. can’t afford to be energy-wasting and spending money on projects that destroy the value of neighborhoods."

U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer will kick off the summit and representatives from Oregon Metro will showcase the many innovative transportation and design policies they have implemented in the region that have given Portland one of the highest walking, transit, and bicycle mode shares in the country.

Summit organizers hope to develop the language around network-wide transportation reform so the CNU can persuade lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to incorporate this new urban vision into upcoming climate and transportation legislation.

Marcy McInelly, co-chair of the CNU’s transportation reform initiatives and principle of Sera Architects, said, "Reform is about giving more latitude to use highway funds for pieces of the network that may not be for highways. Right now the federal funds have to increase vehicular mobility, which raises VMT. If you had a funding formula that allowed you to count benefits to cost, it would almost always [result in] the other modes besides cars coming out [as] more beneficial. It would balance consideration of other modes."

Norquist said the CNU is working with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), the most significant body of professional transportation engineers in the country, to develop transportation standards that raise the profile of urban streets to match that of rural roads and freeways in guides like AASHTO’s Green Book for highway and street design.

According to Norquist, reform initiatives should focus on altering "the functional classification system. The current regulatory framework tries to feed future traffic demand, instead of trying to facilitate the network."

Referring to the traditional advocacy position that tries to chip away at the 80-20 funding formula (80 percent of federal funding for freeways, 20 percent for transit), Norquist said a more fundamental change is needed.

"We’re completely for the idea of changing the 80-20 split. But even if the environmental community wins and gets 25-75, you’re still spending 75 percent of the money on road capacity. They should focus on creating roads that are useful and pleasant and create a place where people actually want to be."

Norquist also promised the conference would be fun. "This conference will have the most dynamic and exciting traffic engineers in the world," he said, with a laugh. "These are the reform traffic engineers, the recovering traffic engineers."

The Project for Transportation Reform with take place from November 4-6 and registration is still open. Streetsblog will be covering the summit with regular stories and tweets, so stay tuned.

With the Federal transportation bill up for reauthorization, this year’s CNU Transportation Summit is undoubtedly the most important one yet. Roll up your sleeves and join us in Portland. We need all hands on deck.

JK

If roads and transit capacity are the focus, this completely misses the point. Far, far more capital is spent on building government mandated parking than building new roads. If the ITE should be doing anything, it should be scrapping its manual of urban destruction, “Parking Generation.” This incredibly misguided, unsubstantiated piece of pseudo-science hookum has done more to destroy cities and the pedestrian environment than any other single planning guidance. It is an unmitigated disaster. Way too much time is being spent perfecting the right of way given the environmentally corrosive and anti-urban effect of parking requirements.

Anonymous

As a young traffic engineer (though no PE) I tend to agree with some of the things this site suggests and read it often. I think things will change as a younger generation takes charge. Don’t give up.

JK – I think you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but the logic seems to hold. There are white papers out there that show what the Parking Generation manual suggests can be lowered for TOD. Problem I predict, because I haven’t had the opportunity to work on it myself yet, is finding both a consulting firm and the local government to agree that the parking generation manual is not accurate for TOD. It’ll be tough to find a person that agrees on both sides for a few years.

poncho

how is a CNU summit different from a CNU congress other than being specific to a subject, i.e. transportation? do i take it that it is more participatory and hands on for the audience?

Yes. The Summits draw a much smaller, but focused group of attendees. Transportation itself is still a relatively broad topic, but the Summit format really allows for a hands on approach, the formation of working groups, and a more intimate space to share information.

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